This invention relates generally to sugar making machinery and more particularly to devices and methods for achieving improvements in sugar centrifugals which provide reduced lump formation together with reduced crystal impact damage.
Sugar making requires several operations for separating massecuite into sugar crystals and molasses (or run-off), its two components. In all cases except for separation of high grade sugar crystals, the crystals are re-melted and further refined. The quality and integrity of the crystals after separation is therefore of minimal consequence except in the case of high grade sugar.
Broken crystals require downgrading of sugar product, and they must, therefore, be avoided. However, the viscosity of the molasses component of the massecuite requires centrifugual separation in order to free the sugar crystals of the surrounding syrup. The high discharge velocity and resultant high gravity forces imposed on the massecuite by the centrifugals frequently results in excessive damage to the high grade crystals due to high velocity impact with the wall of the sugar housing. Another contributor to crystal damage and to the resulting production losses is lump formation which may require shut-down of the centrifugal for removal of lump build-up and which also can cause jams in subsequent processing. This can result in crystal crushing due to attempts to clear such jams. Of course, lumpiness itself requires downgrading of the sugar so that, even when not combined with broken crystals, lumpiness will require some reprocessing.
The foregoing illustrates limitations known to exist in present devices and methods. Thus, it is apparent that it would be advantageous to provide an alternative directed to overcoming one or more of the limitations set forth above. Accordingly, a suitable alternative is provided including features more fully disclosed hereinafter.